After a three-decade cover-up, the State Department is finally admitting that an Arab terrorist leader long promoted by the United States as a peacekeeper, did in fact order the brutal murders of two American diplomats.

In a recently declassified document the State Department admits it knew that the late Yasser Arafat, founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah movement, plotted and supervised the 1973 murders of the two U.S. diplomats in Sudan.

Arafat personally ordered the killings of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador to Sudan, his deputy George Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid during a terrorist takeover of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum. In fact, Fatah representatives based in Khartoum carried out the violent attack known as the Black September Operation.

A U.S. cover-up was first exposed about five years ago when a former Palestinian analyst for the National Security Agency came forward with scathing information of the government’s role in defending Arafat. The former analyst, James Welsh, said communication of the attack was intercepted from Arafat to his terrorist commandos in Sudan, but U.S. officials said it was too vague and its urgency was downgraded.

Though Arafat was a renowned terrorist who promoted violence and went on to kill many more innocent people, he was long hailed by the State Department as a peacemaker and in 1994 he was actually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2001 Bill Clinton even invited Arafat to the White House to participate in Middle East peace negations.